Mission Faithwalk

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” (Psalm 46:10)           I both love and hate this verse. I love it because it’s my goal, my dream, to sit, stand, or otherwise be still and know…to experientially know God…to exalt Him among the nations, in the earth, or wherever. I hate it because I’m me. Be still? Yeah, right, excuse me while I spend a few minutes laughing. I need to work on it. But… if one is working on being still, then one is not being still, one is working.            Other folks may have a different problem with this verse. For them, it speaks of God’s arrogance. Who does God think He is? There are other gods out there who also claim to be gods. How dare He puff out His chest and tell us that He’s the one who is to be exalted?            For me, this statement from God isn’t arrogance, it’s a...

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.   Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful,  for they will be shown mercy.   Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.   Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3-10)                 As I said recently, someone is lying. Either it’s Jesus when He said all the things in today’s passage, or it’s our society, when it tells us that we deserve to be wealthy, we deserve to be comforted, we deserve to inherit the earth (before we are twenty-five years old), we deserve to be filled when we h...

So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,   but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. (II Timothy 1:8-10)           There’s something we tend to miss in our modern day. A few people notice this and point it out, but most don’t. From the Roman perspective, Jesus was executed as a traitor, a usurper, guilty of sedition. From the Pharisaical perspective, Jesus was executed as a heretic who claimed to be God. Paul was arrested twice. The first time, he took the matter to Caesar and was eventually released. The second...

  Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known;     in wrath remember mercy.  (Habakkuk 3:2)           The list of those with whom I struggle to have patience is too long One of those listed is the person who says, “If God would clearly reveal Himself to me just once in a way that made me recognize that I was seeing God, then I would never doubt.” But not everyone who says, “Show Yourself” is lying to themselves, to the rest of us, or to God.            There’s not much known about Habakkuk, but from what he tells us, things in his country were in bad shape. Not only that, but there was a pagan king with his eye on Jerusalem. Habakkuk laments this, and like many people when times are rough, calls out to God to step in and fix things.            He looks back at the history of the nation o...

Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:2 & 4) Simile:    a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g., as brave as a lion, crazy like a fox).                 Let’s begin with what today’s passage doesn’t say. It does not say that a thousand years is a day, or that a thousand years equals a day. It says a thousand years is like a day, and a day like a thousand years. It’s a simile. God is outside of time. The simplest way to put this passage in today’s language is that a long time isn’t long to God. Neither is a short time short.                  Usually, I t...

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)                 One way to rephrase this passage is to say that Paul prayed that we would come to appreciate Psalms 23 and 139 as our reality. Another way is to say that Paul prayed that we would be absolutely blown away by God in our lives. Most days, I think I’m just another of the dumb sheep of Psalm 23, doing my dumb sheep best to follow my nose without giving any real thought to anything. On those days, I think I’m like the people who say, “Yeah, well, if God would do for me what He did for Moses or Paul; if He would do X, Y, and Z, then...

                  Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.   Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror   and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.   But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. (James 1:22-25)           Today, we need to begin with what is strongly implied in the text before we move on to the text itself. When James writes that we should not merely listen to the word, he implies that we should be listening to the word. One of the things that is true of Judaism and Christianity is that they are faiths that are tied to books that claim to have been inspire...